Spell Spotlight: Healing Spirit

Spell Spotlight: Healing Spirit

Healing spirit is the most criticized new spell in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Its design has been heatedly discussed on our own forums, on the D&D Reddit, and every message board and social network in between. It has been almost universally denounced by online fans of D&D as utterly broken, and in desperate need of houseruling, official errata, or even outright banning.

But is healing spirit really that broken? And if it is, what about it needs to be changed in order to fix it? These may sound like silly questions to ask, but a good game designer (and I firmly believe that all good Dungeon Masters must also be good game designers) should look at every spell, class feature, and racial trait from all angles. Let’s take a look at healing spirit—where it succeeds, where it fails, and how you can change it to fit your game.

What Does Healing Spirit Do?

Healing spirit is a 2nd-level spell from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything only available to druids and rangers (and bards that steal it with Magical Secrets or Additional Magical Secrets). The spell’s most important effects are as follows; it has a few other minor properties that you can look at in the spell’s full description:

Requiring only a bonus action to cast, the caster can concentrate on this spell for up to 1 minute, creating a healing spirit that fills a 5-foot cube within 60 feet of them. Whenever a creature you can see enters the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can choose to have the spirit restore 1d6 hit points, requiring no action. This spell can be cast using a higher level spell slot, increasing the healing by 1d6 for each slot level above 2nd.

Healing Spirit’s Pros

This much-maligned spell is not without merit. If it weren't, people would just discard it instead of trying to find ways to fix it! Healing spirit fills an important niche in fifth edition D&D’s design that no other spells cover: powerful in-combat healing.

Party Composition

As a spell exclusive to the druid and ranger classes, it helps players who want to play a druid or ranger fill an important healing niche in parties without a cleric. One of the design goals of fifth edition D&D was to let people play with any party composition that they wanted—and one of the main barriers to this style of play was the perceived necessity of the cleric. Giving a powerful healing spell to druids and rangers is a step towards democratizing healing, in the same vein as giving all classes hit dice to use as a healing resource.

In-Combat Healing

It’s generally considered less efficient to spend spell slots on healing compared to spending them on damage. Compare cure wounds to guiding bolt. One deals 4d6 radiant damage (an average of 14 damage) and grants advantage on a successful hit and grants advantage to the next attacker’s attack roll, while the other restores hit points equal to 1d8 + your spellcasting modifier (an average of 7, assuming you have a +3 spellcasting modifier). Guiding bolt deals twice the damage that cure wounds heals, and has a bonus effect.

Even if you take into account the fact that guiding bolt can miss its target and cure wounds always “hits,” as long as guiding bolt hits more than half the time, it’s a more efficient use of a spell slot than healing.

Healing spirit is a healing spell potent enough to be worth using in combat. It only requires a bonus action to cast, and, with some clever positioning, can restore 1d6 hit points to each of your allies each turn. While in combat, this element of tactical positioning can be an interesting puzzle for the players to unravel, since they have to find a balance between aggressive and defensive positioning.

Out-of-Combat Healing

This is where healing spirit really falls apart. Unfortunately, I don’t have much good to say about this spell when it comes to out-of-combat healing, either from a narrative or mechanical perspective. We’ll look at it more in the cons section.

Healing Spirit’s Cons

Unfortunately, healing spirit steps on the toes of other existing spells and classes in the game. As you’ll soon see, most of healing spirit’s problems arise because, while it is a balanced and fairly competitive spell in combat scenarios, it’s grossly overpowered out-of-combat.

Party Composition

Healing spirit can cause contention in parties where both clerics and druids/rangers are present. If a cleric wants to play a support role and focus on healing and buffing, it feels unsportsmanlike to play a combat-focused ranger or Wild Shape-focused druid that also has access to a healing spell as potent as healing spirit. Personally, I feel that this is an excellent way to differentiate the healing capabilities of different classes, but the out-of-combat balance of healing spirit needs to be addressed if this stylish asymmetrical balance is to work as intended.

In-Combat Healing

My impression of healing spirit, after several readings of its spell description, is that it was balanced around its usefulness in combat (compare its 1 bonus action casting time to prayer of healing’s 10 minute casting time). As it stands, its concentration requirement makes it an unattractive option in combat, especially since so many of druids’ 2nd-level spell options require concentration.

Out-of-Combat Healing

All other small issues aside, healing spirit’s gravest flaw is its power when used out of combat. If an entire party of adventurers clusters in a 5-foot cube for the spell’s full 1 minute duration (in a sort of heroic cuddle pile, perhaps?), each character will regain 10d6 hit points (an average of 35 hit points) at the cost of a single 2nd-level spell slot.

What this essentially means is that, with only a minute of rest and a single 2nd level spell slot, a druid can fully heal an entire party of 3rd level adventurers. It’s a short rest’s worth of healing in a fraction of the time, which essentially allows an adventuring party to take on any challenge at full hit points. This is where your mileage may vary. If you like to throw a small amount of very challenging encounters at your players, then you’re probably designing all of your encounters with the assumption that your players will tackle them at full hit points anyway. This encounter design philosophy leads to a very heroic style of play, where just about every encounter is a major cinematic moment. If that’s your playstyle, then healing spirit’s out-of-combat potency isn’t a problem at all. It may still present other problems, but this isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s the way the fifth edition D&D is balanced.

However, if you like to play a grim-and-gritty D&D where adventuring is all about carefully conserving your resources in grueling dungeon crawls and being slowly worn down by constant small combats… then this presents a huge problem. First of all, starting every combat at full hit points is antithetical to this style of play. Second, healing spirit is so much better at restoring hit points out-of-combat than it is at restoring them in-combat (its supposed primary function), that the most efficient way to conserve precious resources is to only use it out of combat. Finally and most importantly, it is so much more powerful than comparable spells of prayer of healing (available only to 3rd-level clerics) and aura of vitality (available only to 9th-level paladins) that it makes a druid a better cleric than a cleric and a ranger a better paladin than a paladin, as far as healing is concerned.

The Official House Rule

Jeremy Crawford, managing editor of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, frequently answers player-submitted rules questions on his Twitter account. While he maintains that healing spirit is working as intended, it does “have the potential to exceed our expectations” in out-of-combat scenarios. In layman’s terms, the D&D team isn’t going to make a knee-jerk nerf and over-balance the spell. Instead, they’re devoting additional resources to see how this spell plays out long-term to see if it really is as much of a problem as people claim.

In the meantime, however, Jeremy has provided a simple house rule that brings the spell more in line with its intended power level.

[Pictured tweet reads: “If healing spirit has felt too effective in your game, try this house rule, which holds the spell to our expectations for it: the spell ends once the spirit has restored hit points a number of times equal to twice your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum of once).”]

If a 3rd level druid with a Wisdom of 16 (+3) cast healing spirit, it would restore 1d6 hit points to any creature that passed through the spirit’s space or started its turn there a maximum of six times. If, over the course of their adventuring career, that same druid increased their Wisdom to 20 (+5), the spell could restore 1d6 hit points a maximum of ten times. This means that, at its most powerful, healing spirit cast at 2nd level now only restores an average of 35 hit points, instead of 35 hit points per creature.

This is a major nerf, but it brings healing spirit more in line with prayer of healing. To compare, prayer of healing cast at 2nd level restores hit points equal to 2d8 + your spellcasting modifier to up to 6 creatures. At its most efficient, that’s an average of 84 hit points (2d8 rolls an average of 9, plus 5 is 14, times 6). Prayer of healing restores more than twice the number of hit points of the house ruled healing spirit, but is much less flexible. It must be cast out of combat because of its 10 minute casting time, and it only restores a small amount of hit points to each creature, whereas healing spirit allows you to specify how much healing each creature gets.

For more of the tweets Jeremy has made in response to this spell at the height of the outcry, you can check Zoltar’s Sage Advice blog.

My House Rule

I think Jeremy’s proposed house rule is a strong fix to healing spirit. A few months ago, I was asked how I would change healing spirit, if I were a member of the D&D team. I didn’t have a good answer then, but I’ve had some time to think about it, and this is how I would revise healing spirit to make it a more attractive option in combat while clamping down on its out-of-combat power. Here are the changes I would make to healing spirit, and the final wording I would use:

Remove the spell’s concentration requirement, making it a much more attractive in-combat option. This limitation does nothing to make it less powerful outside of combat, so removing it doesn’t break anything.

Causing the spirit to heal requires you to use your reaction when a creature enters the spirit’s space for the first time on its turn or starts its turn there. Replacing “(no action required)” with “as a reaction” limits the spell’s healing to a maximum of 10d6 without having the spell scale multiplicatively with spellcasting ability modifier. I can’t think of any other spells that increase their effective duration based on ability modifier, just spells like cure wounds which add healing based on your spellcasting ability modifier.

My revised version of healing spirit would look like this:

Healing Spirit

2nd-level conjuration

Casting Time: 1 bonus action

Range: 60 feet

Components: V,S

Duration: 1 minute

You call forth a nature spirit to soothe the wounded. The intangible spirit appears in a space that is a 5-foot cube you can see within range. The spirit looks like a transparent beast or fey (your choice).

Until the spell ends, as a reaction when you or a creature you can see moves into the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature. The spirit can’t heal constructs or undead.

As a bonus action on your turn, you can move the spirit up to 30 feet to a space you can see.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the healing increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 2nd.

Healing Spirit in Your Game

When you get right down to it, healing spirit needs some changes. It gives druids and rangers an effective healing spell (hooray!) but it steps all over the cleric and paladin’s comparable healing spells (boo). It you play a heroic game, it lets you start every major fight with full hit points (yay!), but it singlehandedly makes an attrition style of dungeon-crawling play unviable (yikes).

Fortunately, D&D is a game played by humans who can make house rules as they see fit, not a game governed by strict computer programs. Unfortunately, the major problem with not having any official errata on this spell means that my house rules, Jeremy’s house rules, and (most importantly) your house rules are all illegal in D&D Adventurer’s League games. And unfortunately… I have no solutions for that. If you’re having a problem with healing spirit making your AL game less fun, your only recourse is to talk with your players and hope they’re mature about it.

What have your experiences with healing spirit been? I’m interested in what you think of Jeremy’s “official house rule,” and the house rule I’ve provided here, and I also want to know what you have done in your home game to address this spell!

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with Mei and Marzipan, two fey spirits in the form of small fuzzy animals. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.

If you were to remove the 'you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature (no action required) and instead have it automatically heal what ever is standing there (it doesn't require an action so would make no difference), it could deter overuse as an enemy creature could hijack your healing spell

There's a couple of problems with this that James' solution doesn't have:

It'll still lead to rule debates about how creature size, area of effect rules, grid rules, and time out of combat interact. As I've pointed out earlier in the thread, there's a lot of subtle nuances and leeway for different interpretations. Having a hard limit of 1 heal per round sidesteps all of that.

Letting something happen without using an action, bonus action or reaction is really risky and arguably bad design. "Free" actions tend to have game-breaking interactions with other rules; we've already seen this with the UA Tunnel Fighter Style, which is meant to be used defensively but inadvertently enables infinite Polearm Master opportunity attacks when enemies enter your range. As soon as feature gets introduced that goes something like "whenever you restore hit points to a creature using a spell, X happens" Healing Spirit causes problems again.

The current wording gives party members the option of running through the spirit's area, which is more flexible than having to stay in it.

Players almost always have much better control over the battlefield than monsters, and the caster can just move the spirit if an enemy wanders into it, so in practice the risk introduced would be negligible.

If you were to remove the 'you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature (no action required) and instead have it automatically heal what ever is standing there (it doesn't require an action so would make no difference), it could deter overuse as an enemy creature could hijack your healing spell

There's a couple of problems with this that James' solution doesn't have:

It'll still lead to rule debates about how creature size, area of effect rules, grid rules, and time out of combat interact. As I've pointed out earlier in the thread, there's a lot of subtle nuances and leeway for different interpretations. Having a hard limit of 1 heal per round sidesteps all of that.

Letting something happen without using an action, bonus action or reaction is really risky and arguably bad design. "Free" actions tend to have game-breaking interactions with other rules; we've already seen this with the UA Tunnel Fighter Style, which is meant to be used defensively but inadvertently enables infinite Polearm Master opportunity attacks when enemies enter your range. As soon as feature gets introduced that goes something like "whenever you restore hit points to a creature using a spell, X happens" Healing Spirit causes problems again.

The current wording gives party members the option of running through the spirit's area, which is more flexible than having to stay in it.

Players almost always have much better control over the battlefield than monsters, and the caster can just move the spirit if an enemy wanders into it, so in practice the risk introduced would be negligible.

What I'm meaning is that the Healing Spirit is literally a sentient spirit that will stand where told and attempt to heal anything that it can for its 10 rounds (whether told to or not), so it would heal a creature in its 5ft cube (a single medium creature taking up a 5ft space usually). If a large or larger creature stood there, it might receive only a fraction of the healing or such as the DM declares.

To prevent a hostile creature receiving this healing would take the bonus action to move the spirit/spellThis risk is also nullified vs Undead/Constructs, and also the spell says you must be able to see the creature for it to be healed so it could be that the spirit dissipates if you lose sight with it.

@Wolfbat no enemy can hijack your healing spell, this is also something i thought of, but its already written in the spell that you are the one deciding if it heals or not. so for a sentient being, it is pretty much limited to what you tell it to do. so no enemies cannot hijack your healing spell. they can only try to block it by standing in it. but in the end all that does is forcing you to move it. something which already happens.

@inquisitivecoder agreed, removing concentration and adding can only be cast once is a great idea.

no my problem with the solution presented above is that it uses a reaction, something most healers could use for anything else. it also deters the spell too much.compare it to healing word which heals 1d4+bonus and can be cast at higher level. with only a 1st level spell slot. while this heals longer sure, but requires more planning then healing word. your goal is to not make it weaker then healing word either. using the reaction to me is strickly stupid. it generates more problems then it really is. i used the spell for great effect up to this point as is in my games and there was barely any real problems with it. so me thinks people are just too picky about it. i mean for a spell that heals as a level 2 spell. it does whats expected. if i had to change it...

i'd go with these...- remove concentration, put the clause "if you cast it again, the previous one disappear."- add this out of combat text, "if used outside of combat, the spirit can split 60 hp between a maximum of 6 people."

which literally brings it inline with prayer of healing who heals calculated like this...6 people, 14 (2d8+bonus) hp healed with a second level spell slot. meaning prayer of healing heals 78hp total between 6 people. the spirit heals less, but can be used in combat which makes the difference ebtween them both.

i really dont think the spell requires anything else then this really.

I do not think healing spirit is an issue in combat, so I'm in favor of changes that don't impact it in combat. I think remove concentration is a large buff. It means rangers no longer have to cost between healing and damage and Druids don't have to juggle concentration as much to heal .

Personally, I like the one love addition, "Out of Combat the spell ends after restoring hit points a number of times eaqual to twice your spell casting modifier (minimum of once."

That keeps it as a unique and powerful in combat heal, without stepping on things like Aura of Vitality, Prayer of healing, and song of rest outside of combat .

The house rule to "fix" healing spirit should be consistent with the "story" of the spell. That story doesn't include a hard cap on the amount of healing it can provide during combat, so relying on that particular crutch out of combat feels clunky and wrong.

To me, the really interesting thing about this spell isn't actually a healing spell; it's a summoning spell that conjures a friendly nature spirit to do that work for you. A spirit that has some will of its own. The solution, I think, involves characterizing that spirit's nature in a way that it departs this plane shortly after it senses that the threat has passed. Why not just say it like that, even, and append this line to the end of the spell: "Once the threat has passed, the spirit vanishes at the end of the caster's next turn, regardless of the remaining duration." Also amend the first line to be "You call forth a nature spirit to soothe the wounded in times of danger", or words to that effect, to drive that point home.

I think the spell is fine the way it is. It's given Druids and Rangers a potent healing spell that takes up concentration. The Healing Spirit doesn't restore hit points when IT moves through a space, but when other creatures move through its. So it's not an overpowered healing spell in combat, it's more useful as a death-preventative more than anything during a fight and out of combat it's super helpful. The comparison between it and Prayer of Healing is the fact that Prayer of Healing is honestly an awful spell. It takes 10 minutes to cast and cannot be cast as a ritual. Whose idea was that? The spell shouldn't be nerfed just because it's handier than older options. Buff the old spells, make them better.

All other small issues aside, healing spirit’s gravest flaw is its power when used out of combat. If an entire party of adventurers clusters in a 5-foot cube for the spell’s full 1 minute duration (in a sort of heroic cuddle pile, perhaps?), each character will regain 10d6 hit points (an average of 35 hit points) at the cost of a single 2nd-level spell slot.

I'm pretty sure you mean 1d6, not 10d6, which isn't that OP for a 2nd level spell. Unless I'm misunderstanding something (which is entirely possible - I'm fairly new to D&D and VERY new to D&D Beyond).

No it is actually 10d6. This is because it can give 1d6 of heal to a full party in one round and healing spirit last for 10 turns. So in the end it gives 10d6 hit points to each member of the party.This is why it is considered OP.Hope that clarified any questions.

I am perfectly fine with the spell how it is. As a ranger I have enough spells eating up my bonus action and concentration that its a trade off to start healing mid combat. The first time I used it I pulled it out in a situation where we were trapped in a cramped tunnel with an otyugh attacking our cleric at the back. While we were clearing rubble to make an escape, she when unconscious but was brought back up. The healing was just barely enough to be a help but not overpowered. which simulated it being a 1d6 for 10 rounds spell because of space issues.

The second time I used it was out of combat and I RPed a whole situation where the spirit was radiating an aura of healing to the 3 injured members who were touching the spirit. While we ran though it with our movement in game to trigger the healing. It was powerful but I could have used other spells like pass without a trace to avoid the encounter completely.

Breaking the spell in half so I need a bonus action to move it and a reaction to heal is way to punishing for in combat. I give up Opportunity attacks, the ability to cast absorb elements. for being able to cast hunter's mark which already needs a bonus action to cast and move it. You are then keeping track of where your two external effects. A lot of movement can happen in a round, if your hunters mark target dies. You are now in a situation where your picking between damage and healing which in the write up said damage is nearly always a better option.

keep the spell as is and give it to the nature domain and the ancient paladin and call it a day, so unless you want a nature focused character you can't complain about the spell.

One of my friends proposed a house-rule where healing spirit only works if a person ends their turn on the spirit's square, thus it can only be used once per round. James' proposed solution (using a reaction) does functionally the same thing: instead of potentially providing healing once per turn, it can only provide healing once per round.

But overall, though, I do think the spell works fine as written in combat. It's potent, but it has a cost. The concentration requirement is enough of a disincentive for players to use it. A druid or ranger will have to sacrifice one of their major damage dealers (summoned animals, hunter's mark, etc.) if they want to provide that healing.

James' fix solves the big problem (Healing Spirit is too potent out of combat, because the concentration factor becomes less significant) but it nerfs the spell's in-combat utility. As a consolation for that nerf, the concentration effect is removed. I think I like Jeremy's fix better (it solves the problem in one iteration instead of three), but I would certainly give James' fix a try at my table.

Not only is the spell super strong but if you also have a cleric who casts beacon of hopeit massively overpowers it, granting the full possible six hp from any person jumping through meaning out of combat a party of six adventurers could heal 60hp each, totalling 360hp for the measly cost of a 2nd & 3rd level spell slot. Most combats end in much less than 10 rounds so even cast during combat this is a problem because once combat ends you can heal back up instantly pretty much.

Bards that take Aura of Vitality are already going to be a better healer than a Paladin at the same level, because Lore bards get access to this spell 3 levels before a Paladin would.

As someone that has played a bard that took Aura of Vitality as her MS at level 6 despite having a life cleric in the party, I can say that it hasn't disrupted our gameplay all that much. As it allows the cleric to concentrate on other valuable concentration spells while my bard uses her bonus to keep the party topped off.

I think with Healing Spirit, the fact that it does ALL creatures is a bit overpowered. Perhaps it should be limited to creatures equal to the caster's spellcasting modifier OR put it in line with Aura of Vitality on only allow it to heal one creature. The fact that a druid gets this a level early but heals 1d6 less makes it more even I think.

Like Thunder Step and Dimension Door. They both do similar things, but TS you get a level earlier BUT you have to be able to see your destination and it's a range of 90 feet. There has to be a trade off there and Aura of Vitality and Healing Spirit doesn't do that well. HS has less healing per round but that is negated by the fact that it can do multiple creatures.

No it is actually 10d6. This is because it can give 1d6 of heal to a full party in one round and healing spirit last for 10 turns. So in the end it gives 10d6 hit points to each member of the party.This is why it is considered OP.Hope that clarified any questions.

Ah ok, I see what you mean now... yeah, that's pretty dope! As a Druid, I haven't been using it because "Cure Wounds heals more", but now that I have a better understanding of how it works, I'll probably give it a shot! ^_^

TL;DR - Time is measured in Minutes, Hours, Days (not rounds and turns). Combat is made manageable by initiative, rounds, and turns. It is a TOOL to better manage the standard blocks of time. Outside of combat, a round has no definition. The healing spirit spell isn't broken, or over-powered, it actually works as intended. The gamer's emphasis of rounds and turns, and the desire to exploit every second of the game to their benefit in order to "win", are the real problem.

Want the RAW?

For Time, the PHB states, "In a dungeon environment, the adventurer's movement happens on a scale of minutes." (Bold within the text). After some examples, it states, "In a city or wilderness, a scale of hours is often more appropriate." Next paragraph, "For long journeys, a scale of days works best" and finally, "In combat and other fast-paced situations, the game relies on rounds, a 6-second span of time."

Thus, the default time for a scene is measured in minutes, not turns or rounds. By RAW, healing spirit works as intended. This means, the spell needs NO update or errata.

The breakdown of time into Rounds and Turns is ONLY to make combat move at a manageable place, not the other way around. It's not an If/Then proof where things are perfectly equal at all times. At the DM's discretion, the game can remain in rounds at the conclusion of an encounter, but it doesn't mean a PC is entitled to exploit the effects of something by reverse logic that breaks from the rules and spirit of the game.

How to play the spell?

By the RAW of the PHB and XGE, a PC technically has no turns left to benefit as such. In the spirit of the cooperative nature of the game, or if you're feeling generous as a DM, how I run this spell in Adventure's League play and at home: As combat concludes and there are no turns to be adjudicated, a PC can gain the benefits of the healing spirit ONCE.

The Take-Away

Recognizing that rounds and turns don't exist outside of combat answers the question as to the design nature, intent, and execution of the healing spirit spell.

The spell functions in the (healing) spirit of the game, the PCs should endeavor not to break a system to their own benefit, in the same way a DMs should endeavor not to kill their players out of spite.

I really love this spell as written for in-combat, so for me personally, I think I would just house rule that the spirit is more effective when the caster's adrenaline is pumping (AKA in combat), and can heal any number of creatures, but only one creature at a time, up to 10d6 split however you want, outside of combat. If the players attempt to rules lawyer it by attempting to carry around a hostile creature or get adrenaline pumping another way, I think it would be more telling of the players attempting to abuse it anyway.

This, however, means nothing for official wording, because I can't really think of a way to word that for official ruling purposes.

I considered addressing in this way, but eventually decided against it. If I were to rule that it could only be used in combat, I would word it as "The healing spirit can only heal when you can see at least one hostile creature."

Sometimes, a single entry is not where we find all the answers. The section in the PHB that governs "Time" is the companion is the precedence you require for making the spell function as intended. See the post I made a few minutes ago; it has the direct quotes from the PHB regarding how time is governed, and works perfectly with RAW and RAI, but only IF your table recognizes and appreciates its hierarchy in RAW.

There is no need to add more math to the equation, and I think that-- possibly even Jeremy-- forgot that this was already covered within the PHB. There are no turns outside of rounds. There are no rounds outside of combat. Healing spirit relies on these to function. There is a generous compromise, should you desire, and one that doesn't break the game OR require additional math to sort out.